Harmony 1000 or Harmony 1?

[Smurfin]

Hi all

As I'm about to move in with the better half, I thought it about time to consider losing all my remotes as - bless her - she just looks at them wondering what to press :lol:

I've dabbled in remotes before, and previously owned a Marantz 9600 (think it was that one, the mono one). Took me bloody ages to programme the damn thing, but I finally got there.

Anyway, as much as I liked the Marantz, I really don't have time to faff around anymore with programming a new one (I can't help but play around with all those lovely bitmaps ), so I was thinking of going down the Harmony route.

I had a brief play with the Harmony 1000 in a dealers recently, and loved the looks and the feel of it. I must admit though (remember this was trying out an unprogrammed one for the first time, literally for 2 minutes), I wondered if I'd spend alot of time scrolling through screen after screen to get to the different functions of kit.

That's got me thinking about the Harmony One, which looks pretty funky (although not as nice as the 1000). From a WAF perspective, I'm wondering if this will be more acceptable, and whether she will like the hard button approach more than the touchscreen?

The only downside that I can see is that the touchscreen on the One is tiny by comparison, and I do like my big touchscreens (that may be because I want it to look good and expensive...how sad am I ).

For the record, I'm not overly bothered about the coloured buttons, ditching sky hd in 3 weeks as I don't think it's worth the money, so I'll literally be using the freeview that's built in to the new plasma - when they finally release the PZ800!

So, any advice would be appreciated. Which of the two is the best option?

Cheers
Matt

[Smurfin]

Anyone?

[Smurfin]

[monksy74]

Smurfin,

I never liked the look of the H1000 - it just doesn't look practical. To use the touchscreen you presumably need to use 2 hands. I've never tried one, but if the shuttle controls are on the touchscreen then I think it would be difficult to use. When fast forwarding / rewinding you generally have you're thumb resting on the play button waiting for the point you want to resume - hovering over a touchscreen wouldn't be good. You also need to look at the remote to see which button you are pressing.

With the Harmony One you get a good compromise of well laid out hard buttons for the most common and most used buttons and the flash colour touchscreen for less common buttons / favourite channel icons / activities etc.

If you've seen the H1 thread you'll have seen a lot of people complaining about the lack of colour buttons on the H1 as they are used a lot in the devices they have. This should give you an indication that most people prefer hard buttons where possible.

I upgraded from a 555 to an H1 and think the H1 is great - one of the reasons is that the hard buttons are laid out a lot better than the 555. The touchscreen is fine but it is easy to accidentally press a button.

I would recommend the H1 - it still has a flash touchscreen, but I think a remote needs to be practical as well as looking flash. The H1000 just doesn't look easy to use.

Also if you want it to look good, have you seen squareeyes Harmony One channel logo site - www.iconharmony.com

Hopefully a happy H1000 use could offer some advice on whether my opinions are true.

Phil

[Smurfin]

Thanks! Going to see if I can have a play with a Harmony One tomorrow

[hhatkin]

Giving up Sky and taking on Freeview won't make any difference to the need for colour buttons as they have similar functions.
It was a mistake not to include them on the One but you can allocate the commands to spare hard buttons and they're just as good there.

[paulec]

if it helps - I have a 1000. Very cool looking, very easy to programme but if you want one handed operation and the tactile feel of a standard button remote then steer clear. I have Sky+ as well as standard DVDs etc and the play/rw/ff operation on the 1000 is a little bit of a pain. If I know I'm going to mess around a lot on Sky+ playback then I can always have a Sky remote handy. Overall though a fantastic piece of kit that looks great. A colleague of mine has a H1 and things it's a revelation. Cheers and good luck